FIX Protocol Limited (FPL), has appointed Justin Stephan, Director of Trading Applications at Wellington Management Company, as the new Co-Chair of the FPL Global Steering Committee, the group responsible for driving FPL’s strategy worldwide. Greg Wood meanwhile, Vice President of Advanced Execution Services, Credit Suisse, has joined other senior market participants as a FPL Director. FPL’s Directors provide fiscal and legal oversight, and guide the organisation to ensure it continues to achieve on-going financial stability.
FPL is an industry-driven organisation focused on supporting the evolving business needs of the trading community to help firms optimise efficiencies and reduce costs. Support for the organisation has grown tremendously in recent years with membership increasing over 40% since the start of 2010. The scope of FPL activities continues to expand as its work proves increasingly relevant in an ever changing trading environment.
FPL members are leading efforts globally that range from enabling the buy-side trading community to achieve greater transparency, to initiatives that support risk mitigation in automated trading practices. Members are working to expand the use of standards in multiple geographies and following recent U.S. regulatory reform, and expected changes in Europe, are encouraging new and emerging swap execution facilities (SEF) to use FIX. FPL works to encourage the use of non-proprietary, free and open industry standards around the world with all parts of the financial community benefitting from the resultant consistency and transparency. This transparency and consistency is becoming essential in furthering regulation while restoring investor confidence. FPL’s work also includes continuing to enhance FIX to meet expanding trading needs and the development of an industry benchmark for latency measurement. Both new leaders will play a fundamental role in supporting the development of these efforts and other initiatives as we progress into 2012.
Commenting on these appointments, Jim Kaye, Co-Chair FPL Global Steering Committee and Director, Product Development, European Execution Services, BofA Merrill Lynch stated, “I would like to welcome both Justin and Greg to their new positions and look forward to working closely with each of them. FPL continues to play an increasingly important role within the global trading community. The organisation supports a wealth of evolving needs and provides a forum for market participants to drive change that delivers industry-wide benefit. Justin and Greg’s deep expertise will play an instrumental role in helping to shape the future of FPL. I would also like to extend a special thank you to FPL‘s outgoing Co-Chair, Scott Atwell, for his dedicated and highly valuable leadership over the past seven years which influenced many of the organisation’s successes.”
